While Iran's PRESS TV is rah-rah, others are a bit more down to earth. For example, CBS NEWS offers:

Indeed, a senior U.S. military official told CBS News that Thursday's
advance was a "small operation to liberate some villages near Makhmour
and push the foreign line of troops west." A commander of the Kurdish
Peshmerga forces characterized the operation in the same way.

Still, the Iraqi ground operations are preliminary and Iraqi forces are still about 75 miles away from Mosul.Iraq's
military has yet to assemble enough trained forces needed to seize the
city, a complex operation that will exceed anything Iraqi forces have
accomplished since the country's military collapsed in the face of an
Islamic State onslaught two years ago.

Jason Ditz (ANTIWAR.COM) sees something more than liberating Mosul as the point of the current operation focusing on Makhmour:The Makhmur District is also a key to holding oil fields around
Kirkuk, and the ISIS offensive is seen by many analysts as part of an
effort to ultimately regain control over those lucrative oil fields, and
have been “outgunning” the thousands of Iraqi troops in the area.Whether they’re trying to save Iraqi ground troops who still can’t
stand up to ISIS, or save oil fields, however, the latest escalation
puts US troops even further in harm’s way, and has put the war even
further afield from the “no boots on the ground” affair initially
promised by the Obama Administration.